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NSW town makes a racquet for Goolagong

Dennis Passa

Evonne Goolagong Cawley can add another "big" achievement to her glittering tennis CV - the unveiling on Saturday of a giant replica of her signature wooden racquet that helped her win seven grand slam singles titles.

Goolagong Cawley was back in the small town that spawned her tennis career to help Barellan - population about 400 and some 430 dusty kilometres west of Sydney - celebrate its 100th anniversary.

With it came a special commemoration from the townsfolk to Barellan's favourite daughter and where Goolagong, in the late 1950s, used to hit ball after ball against a concrete practice wall to hone her skills.

An estimated 6,000 to 7,000 people attended the festivities in which the Australian and Aboriginal flags draped on either side of the large racquet during the ceremony.

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People in the town lent her racquets and often drove her to tournaments and paid her entry fees in her formative years.

Although she was born in the nearby town of Griffith and left Barellan as a teenager to further her career, she always considers Barellan her true home town.

Australia has a folksy - and sometimes tacky - kinship with all things big.

Witness the oversized big prawn, sheep, banana, guitar, pineapple, bottle and lobster, among others, at various towns and cities around the country.

But Goolagong Cawley, 58, says this big one - her 20-to-1 scale replica Dunlop wooden racquet measuring nearly 14 metres long and made of steel at a cost of $45,000 - and a tennis ball to complement it - is worth it.

"It took my breath away, it almost brought a tear to my eye," Goolagong Cawley said from Barellan. "I felt so proud of the effort that the townspeople have gone through."

The town remains close to her heart - she was married there in 1975 to English tennis player Roger Cawley. Both her deceased parents - Kenny and Linda Goolagong, who had eight children - are buried there.

Goolagong Cawley, who now lives at Sunrise Beach in Queensland, hadn't been back to Barellan in a few years, so the visit has brought back pleasant memories.

"It's so great to be home again," she said. "I remember the day they began building the practice wall. I must have been seven or eight, and I watched every brick being laid. I must have been annoying the workmen after a while."

The big racquet came about through the efforts of a local tennis-loving fan, David Irvin, who has a special connection to Goolagong Cawley - he won a 1976-era Goolagong signature racquet.

When the town began looking at ways to celebrate its 100th-year anniversary, Irvin could think of no better way than to honour its most famous citizen.

"I was lucky enough to be in the right spot at the right time," Irvin says. "We got this superstar who came from Barellan, and now we have this racquet to honour her. She fits in like she's part of the family."

Goolagong Cawley reached the finals of 16 of 24 grand slam singles tournaments from 1971 to 1976, winning five of them. She won Wimbledon titles nine years apart - 1971 and 1980, the French Open in 1971 and the Australian Open for four consecutive years from 1974.

When Kim Clijsters won the US Open last month, she became the first player to win a major as a mother since Goolagong Cawley in 1980.

Goolagong retired in 1983 and lived in the United States - at Hilton Head, South Carolina and Naples, Florida - before moving back to Australia in 1992.

Now, she and her husband help organise tennis camps and educational programs for Aboriginal youths.

She and Cawley and their daughter, Kelly, drove down to Barellan from their Queensland home late last week, driving past the park that housed the big racquet - covered with a shroud ahead of the ceremony.

"Roger and Kelly didn't want me to see it, so they blindfolded me through town," Goolagong Cawley said.

And how does it feel to have her racket join the Australian "big" list of oversized attractions?

"They've done such a great job on the racquet," she said. "And don't forget the ball. It's a bloody big ball."